This week has been a milestone for myself on my Sacred Journey as an ‘Aj Kin’, or Daykeeper Shaman. It was 20 years ago on Jan. 1, 1994, that the world heard of the Zapatista uprising against NAFTA. To me this was a major awakening moment.
I began reading all the communiques released by Sub-commandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista rebellion. I would later find out he was friends with my mentor the Mayan Grand Elder Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj, ‘Tata’ for short, who told me Marcos was working now at the UN, but he did not reveal Marcos’ real name to me.
In 1994 I was in college studying music composition and classical guitar. I was not the best student, I’ll admit. I was feeling very isolated from my classmates and from society in general. My upbringing was not very typical at all; my family had moved many times for my Dad’s work from Texas to Colorado, New Jersey and Caracas, Venezuela, and back to Texas.
I practically went to a different school each grade until high school. When we landed and built a house, it turned out to be in the most conservative county in Texas (and that’s a hard title to claim!), in a little town called New Braunfels.
One part of traveling I remember very well was going to visit the National Museum in Mexico City and seeing the great Aztec calendar stone when I was about seven years old. Just like the pyramid at Chichen Itza or Teotihuacan, you have to see it with your own eyes and stand in awe of its presence to truly understand why this kind of monument is so revered and important to the whole world.